Obama Administration To Wall Street-We Still Love You Guys-Now Pony Up

Posted by Tom Lindmark on March 22nd, 2009

Well, file this one under the heading that no good deed ever goes unpunished.

The administration according to the New York Times spent most of today trying to convince big investors to jump on board Treasury Secretary Geithner’s plan to bailout the banks. The reticence they are encountering is of course the prospect of being hauled before a Congressional committee or having their profits taxed after the fact. The AIG dustup hasn’t been lost on any of them.

That was the reason for the frontal assault on the Sunday morning talk shows. I found this statement perhaps the most amusing of all:

“What we’re talking about now are private firms that are kind of doing us a favor, right, coming into this market to help us buy these toxic assets off banks’ balance sheets,” Christina D. Romer, the White House’s chief economist, said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I think they understand that the president realizes they’re in a different category,” she said, adding, “They are firms that are being the good guys here.”

I doubt that any of these guys are operating under the illusion that they’re the good guys but I do expect that most will jump on board this one. They have enough cover to come out whole and the prospect of this payday is probably enough to convince anyone that a few hours in front of Barney Frank is a small price to pay.

Geithner is supposed to announce this at 8:45 tomorrow. That’s Eastern time and I live 3 hours away. I’ll have my comments but no snap announcements here. I’m going to take this one in, think about it for awhile, read what others have to say and then weigh in.